


Normal (is whatever works for you)

by Poetry



Category: Leverage
Genre: Developing Relationship, Family, Fluff, Multi, Open Relationships, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 10:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7098577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot, Parker, and Hardison each have their quirks. As they fall into their new relationship, they learn how to live with each other's eccentricities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normal (is whatever works for you)

**I. Eliot**

Eliot slept with other people. He explained at the very beginning that that was how he wanted it. “I’ve never been monogamous,” he admitted, “and my only real relationship was with Aimee. I want to try with the two of you, and I’m hoping maybe it can work out. But I can’t be monogamous, not even with two people.” 

Parker didn’t mind, especially because he really was trying his hardest on the whole relationship thing. But he was just not good at the whole sleeping with other people part, at least not at first.

The first time, Eliot really hit it off with their client’s daughter, and Parker and Hardison gave him winks and nods and let him “get his flirt on,” as Hardison put it. But he came back to their bed later that night, red-faced and sulking.

“What went wrong?” Hardison said, rolling over to face him in bed. “That girl really liked you, man.”

“Nothing went wrong,” Eliot gritted out, “until your _panties_  fell down from the ceiling beam, _Parker_ , right onto my _head.”_

“So what?” said Parker, around the straw in her juice box. She liked having a juice box before sleeping. “We’re not monogamous. It’s okay if you take off my panties and also hers.”

“You didn’t tell her, did you,” Hardison said. “Dude, that is not cool. You gotta disclose to your other partners, so they know what they’re getting into. I’ve been reading this book, I got it on my ebook reader, you should check it out. It’s all about ethical non-monogamy and stuff.”

“Sure,” Eliot said, in the voice that meant there was no way he would do it. “I’ll tell people, okay?” That part was in the voice that meant that he would do it, but he wasn’t sure he was going to like it.

The second time seemed to go fine at first. Eliot seemed pretty happy when they saw him the next day, anyway. But then later that week, Parker was behind the bar with Hardison tasting his new beer. Eliot clasped Hardison’s shoulder and took the stein of beer from him, drinking with his lips in the same spot where Hardison’s had been. Parker watched his throat move as he drank, waiting to see if he liked it. That was when the woman Eliot had slept with came up to the bar and said to Parker, “Oh. So _you’re_  Eliot’s situation.”

“A situation?” Hardison turned to Eliot. “Is that what you called us? A situation?”

The woman leaned back, folded her arms, and raised her eyebrows. “Oh. So you’re _both_  his situation.”

“ _How_  can you be shy about this? _How_? You are many things, Eliot Spencer, but you are not _shy_.”

“I’m not,” Eliot said, but he was turning pink.

Parker ignored the sound of them arguing and turned to the woman. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s shy because this is important to him,” she said slowly, “and he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet.”

“Huh,” said Parker. “That makes sense.”

The third time was with Maggie. That went really well, because Parker and Hardison liked Maggie, and she was smart about people in the same way that Sophie was. It turned into a regular thing, something the two of them did whenever Maggie was in town. But they all swore a solemn oath to never, ever tell Nate.

 

**II. Parker**

On a cold, drizzly Wednesday, Parker disappeared. This was not unusual. 

Four days passed. Still no Parker. Now _this_ was getting unusual.

“Where is she?” Eliot said, laying a plate of goulash in front of Hardison with maybe a little more force than was necessary.

Hardison started ticking off on his fingers. “Vancouver, San Diego, Dallas, Minneapolis, Tampa, _Hoboken_  for some reason… she did the same circuit on the same date last year. And looking back, I think she may have done it the year before that, too.”

Eliot sat down across from him. The beer sloshed in his glass when he set it down. “What’s she doing?”

Hardison shrugged and started eating. “Ask her when she gets back.”

“Can’t you just pull camera footage or something and find out?”

“What are you so worked up about, man? Parker can take care of herself.”

“She can,” Eliot forced out through his teeth. “But she doesn’t have to.” _Not anymore,_  he didn’t say.

“I’m not gonna invade her privacy. I just track her location in case something happens and she needs us. But hey, we’ll ask her about it when she gets back, and maybe she’ll let us in on it next time.”

* * *

“Where’ve you been?” Even to his own ears, Eliot sounded like he was trying too hard to be casual.

“Can I say I don’t want to talk about it?” Parker said, hooking her leg around the top of the stair railing.

“’Course you can,” Eliot said, without hesitation.

Parker smiled. “That’s what Hardison always says.”

“Damn right I do,” Hardison said.

“Okay. Then I’ll tell you.” Parker used her thigh muscles to flip herself upside down, her hair a pale silky banner hanging from the railing. “I checked on all my stashes. And picked out stuff to give to people.”

Hardison stared. Eliot was pretty sure he was staring, too. “You gave stuff to people? To _who_?”

Parker swung herself a little from side to side, like a pendulum. “The orphans we rescued. The girl who stole cars. You know. People.” She flung herself back onto the stairs, upright. “That’s the kind of thing we do, right? Because people are more important than money.”

Money was a sure thing. People you couldn’t be sure of. That’s why Eliot always figured Parker liked money so much. But maybe the balance was different when there were people you _were_  sure of.

“Could we go check on our stashes too, next time?” Hardison said. “All three of us. Like a road trip, but with more philanthropy.”

Parker slid down the railing. Eliot had his arms ready to catch her before she reached the bottom. From Eliot’s arms, she leaned over to kiss Hardison on the cheek. “Okay. That sounds fun.”

 

**III. Hardison**

After searching his walk-in closet for the _fourth_  time, Hardison said, “Hey, Parker. Do you have any souvenirs from that trip we took to Cancun to take down that dot-com preppy-ass white dude?”

Parker ate a gummy worm slowly, mangling her words through it. “Didn’t you buy ten beach blankets?”

“I have torn this apartment _apart_  and I can’t find the damn things! Have you seen them?”

“No. I do have some sunglasses in cool shapes that I stole in Cancun. Star ones, heart ones, triangle ones…”

“Babe, that’s perfect. Can I have those?” It used to be that Hardison got nervous any time he asked Parker for her stuff, knowing how protective she could get over it. Now, it was getting easier.

Eliot came out of the bathroom, after what Hardison was pretty sure had been a half-hour session with a hair straightener – not that he would ever dare interfere in The Great Eliot Spencer Hair Care Routine. “I got some jars of agave syrup while we were down there. What do you need them for?”

“It’s my foster sister Malika. Her birthday’s coming up. I try to send my foster siblings cool gifts, you know, not just money. I wanna show them I’ve been thinking about them, right? And Malika, she’s always wanted to travel, but she can’t afford it, so for her birthday I always send her something from a cool place I went to, so she can kinda get the experience.”

“Why don’t you just buy her a vacation?” Parker said.

Hardison shook his head. “Malika likes the idea of travel, but she’s too practical for that. She’d rather just get the money the vacation cost, so she can use it for the important stuff.”

“You can have my agave syrup, no problem,” Eliot said. “I can just order more from Mexico anyway.”

“You can have the sunglasses too,” Parker said. “You have a lot of foster siblings, right? What do you send the other ones for their birthdays?”

“Well,” Hardison said, “I send joke stuff to Ricardo, ‘cause his sense of humor got frozen at age twelve, and I send books to Lina, ‘cause that’s all she ever wants, and I send cool photos to Jasmine ever since she started her photography major.”

“How do you remember so many things about all of them?” Parker said.

“You remember when to interrupt Hardison’s game to make him start shouting the most,” Eliot pointed out.

“That’s because he’s _Hardison_ ,” said Parker. “Oh. I get it. Wow. That’s a lot of family. I don’t know if I could be family for that many people.”

Hardison said, “I think you might be better at it than you think."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Normal (is whatever works for you)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12617988) by [frecklebombfic (frecklebomb)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklebomb/pseuds/frecklebombfic), [idellaphod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idellaphod/pseuds/idellaphod), [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




End file.
